Abstract

Control of crystal growth is important in various scientific or industrial processes such as purification, crystalline devises, X-ray crystallography, and so on. Most of studies have focused so far to the control of crystal growth by adjusting environmental parameters such as additive, solvent, and temperature. On the other hand, we have recently reported an innovative approach for promoting protein crystal growth by the direct modification of the local crystal structure utilizing femtosecond laser ablation [1]. The protein crystal with surfaces etched locally by femtosecond laser ablation showed the enhancement of the growth rate. We explained the mechanism based on the laser-induced spiral growth mode, which is energetically advantageous compared to the spontaneous two-dimensional nucleation growth mode. In this study, we apply the laser method to growth control of L-phenylalanine (L-Phe) crystal, which shows several crystal polymorph with different morphology (e.g., plates, needles, etc) depending on solution conditions.

© 2017 Japan Society of Applied Physics, Optical Society of America